


Finding Janet

by Klotho_K



Category: Janet King (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-08
Updated: 2016-09-08
Packaged: 2018-08-13 22:56:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7989208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klotho_K/pseuds/Klotho_K
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bianca's story, in several chapters, leading to the moment where Janet asks Bianca, "Who did this to you?"... and maybe beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Janet

**Chapter 1: Looking Back**

 

Looking back, Bianca could see it now. She had always stepped towards danger. She sought it out like an arrowhead seeking a bullseye. She craved it. She was ravenous for it. It fed her: sweet and satiating like a rich, bitter, burning mix of coffee, chocolate and ginger. It was a pathology. When she was younger, she hadn’t recognised that, only when she was a little older did she start to notice.

It was her sisters Bianca feared for most in her world. If her childhood had given her anything, it was an abhorrence of injustice and violence of any sort. She had always stood up for them: fought their corners, argued their cases, pushed herself in front of them to protect them from her father’s drug-infused, psychotic rampages. She had borne some brutal punishment for that. Incandescent with her mother’s compounding lassitude, she had routinely barricaded herself with the two smaller girls into the spartan, box-like bedroom they shared, and calmly read them stories to make them believe that everything was fine. But the November Bianca turned 18, she decided enough was enough.

By the end of that summer, Bianca was ripped and fit. From the moment she heard she had been accepted into the AFP College at Barton, she had spent the days pounding her fury into the pavements and pushing her body beyond its limits in the gym. Every morning at 4am, when the household had slumped into its wrung-out, post-frenzy torpor, she wrenched herself up, threw on her track pants and a hoodie, and set off. For the first ten minutes, she practised putting one foot in front of the other, doggedly hunting the adrenalin. Then she would settle into the rhythm, fixing her eyes into the middle distance; looking neither right nor left. She refused to acknowledge fellow runners, although there were plenty of opportunities. She was in the zone, riding air, her own person. Nothing else existed. Come January’s end, her rage and hard work had paid off. She was light, strong, agile. Focused. At the top of her game.

On the day she left, as she threw her battered carry-all into the boot of her clapped-out, yellow Celica, she told the girls she would be back for them as soon as she could. She slammed the car door closed and turned the key in the ignition. Then, pulling away from the kerb, she clenched her jaw tight and growled savagely at herself to prevent the tears from blurring her vision. She didn’t need to turn round to see the two pale faces watching her from the upstairs window as she took the corner. Those faces were etched into her skin. She felt both terrified and relieved by her escape.

Bianca excelled at the college from the outset. She was a model recruit: astute, hard-working, observant, fearless. In hostile environment exercises, she thrived: she was collected, clear-thinking and decisive. And she was able. The first time she fired the Glock, even as the muzzle of the gun kicked up, everyone could see that she had hit a perfect score. Then she did it again. And again. The rush confounded her, but the exhilaration took her breath away.

Nonetheless, while her trainers recognised her potential, they found her worryingly unreachable. She rarely spoke. She asked nothing from them, preferring instead to solve problems on her own. Her cohort, too, found her withdrawn; brittle and unapproachable. Within a week of being at Barton, she had earned a reputation for being someone you wouldn't want to mess with. And just after that, when she brushed off the sexual advances of yet one more male recruit, with a few well-chosen, astringent words, the story went round she was a frigid, ball-crushing lesbian. Apart from that, her peers barely knew her.

But frigid and ball-crushing she wasn’t.

If Bianca was tentative and flighty about anything that year, it was Rachel. Where she was removed from the rest of her group, around Rachel she was watchful and on edge. She sought her out with those intense, pale blue eyes, silently and unnoticed. There was something, something about Rachel that she felt drawn to - compelled by, but wary of. It was Rachel who was her main competitor; Rachel with whom she compared her skills; tall, muscular, broad-shouldered Rachel, with her platinum-blond crew cut, who disrupted Bianca’s composure every time she saw her. Rachel Stone. And the less said about Rachel Stone, the better.

Yes. Danger was Bianca’s thing. Afterwards, she had finally understood that.

And speaking of danger, now there was Janet.


End file.
